Jim, Jim and John Get Zany Mail

Posted on | March 26, 2019 | Comments Off on Jim, Jim and John Get Zany Mail

by Smitty

Category: humor

In The Mailbox: 03.26.19

Posted on | March 26, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.26.19

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The Leftist Media is Screaming About The Upcoming Recession
EBL: Spinach Appreciation Day
Twitchy: Chicago PD Reportedly Furious With State’s Attorney Kim Foxx (Who Recused Herself) For Dropping Charges Against Jussie Smollett
Louder With Crowder: Sarah Huckabee Sanders Trolls Media With “Mueller Madness” Russian Bracket

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Democrats’ Russia Collusion Hoax Was Just Another Elite Lie, also, Ben Shapiro Pounces On Democrat Reactions To Mueller Report
American Thinker: America’s 233-Year-Old Shock At Jihad
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Tales of Two Cities News
Babalu Blog: The Socialists Endorse Bernie Sanders…Who Supports Dictatorships In Cuba, Nicaragua, Russia, And Venezuela
BattleSwarm: Creepy Porn Lawyer Avenatti Indicted On Felony Charges
Camp Of The Saints:
CDR Salamander: The Ballistic Missile Calculus Changes
Da Tech Guy: Lenten Reflections – Redemption, also, Five Brief #Mueller Madness Thoughts Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Two Scoops Of Trumpenfreude For Creepy Porn Lawyer
Dustbury: A Formidable Scrabble Player
First Street Journal: The Democrats Want To Do Nothing For The Next Two Years
The Geller Report: WSJ Calls For Obama Administration To Be Held To Account For “Historic Abuse Of Government Surveillance Powers”, also, MN Senate Bans Use of Cellphones While Driving – Except For Hijabi-Wearing Muslimas
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Meanwhile At The Supreme Court
Hollywood In Toto: Colbert Rushes To Defend Occasional Cortex From…Herself
Joe For America: Rep. Nunes Says House Intel Will Make Criminal Referrals To AG Barr On FBI, DOJ Officials Who “Perpetrated The Hoax”
JustOneMinute: The Hits Keep Coming!
Legal Insurrection: Pentagon Authorizes $1 Billion To Begin Border Wall Construction, also, Dem Rep Al Green – “I Will Continue To Seek” President Trump’s Impeachment
The PanAm Post: Democrats’ Coup Attempt Fails As Mueller Investigation Implodes
Power Line: Will There Be An Accounting? also, My Day With Snopes
Shot In The Dark: From Now On, You Will Pronounce My Name In My Ancestral Norwegian, To My Satisfaction, Or Be Called A Bigot
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Flee South, Old Folks!
The Political Hat: The Question of Nationalism – The Common Vs. The Collective
This Ain’t Hell: Jussie Smollett Charges Dropped, Record To Be Expunged
Victory Girls: The Media Will Never Apologize For Their Russia Collusion Narrative
Volokh Conspiracy: Baltimore Tries To Use Eminent Domain To Condemn The Preakness Stakes Horse Race
Weasel Zippers: John Brennan Does 180 On Russia Collusion, also, Weird World Of Vegan YouTube Stars Imploding
Mark Steyn: Creepy Porn Soon-To-Be-Disbarred Lawyer

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Category: Linkagery

‘Creepy Porn Lawyer’ Michael Avenatti Arrested by Feds in Extortion Scheme

Posted on | March 26, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘Creepy Porn Lawyer’ Michael Avenatti Arrested by Feds in Extortion Scheme

It this the best week ever, or what?

The arrest Monday of Michael Avenatti in an extortion case reportedly linked to fellow celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos sparked trouble for two men who recently had been fixtures on cable news, especially CNN.
Avenatti, the pugnacious attorney best known for representing adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against President Trump, was arrested on charges that included trying to shake down Nike for as much as $25 million with a co-conspirator by threatening the company with bad publicity. The attorney, who also was accused of embezzling a client’s money to pay his own expenses, was charged with extortion and bank and wire fraud in separate cases in New York and California. He was arrested in New York.
The suspected co-conspirator was identified by The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal as Geragos, a Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer also known for his work with celebrities. CNN, which had hired him as a contributor, cut ties with him Monday.
In a span of just over two months last year, Avenatti appeared 108 times on just two cable news outlets combined: CNN and MSNBC, as the Washington Free Beacon reported. He showed up on CNN 65 times and on MSNBC 43 times between March 7 and May 10 [2018] . . .
He also made headlines when he briefly explored the idea of a presidential bid last year.
In fact, CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter told Avenatti last year: “One reason I’m taking you seriously as a contender is because of your presence on cable news.”

Media exposure has cash value: “Free Beacon estimated Avenatti earned around $175 million in free media from the news networks.”

Since 2016, an anti-Trump industry has sprung up, with CNN and MSNBC as major components of that machinery, cranking out hour after hour of fear and loathing of the president. Michael Avenatti was among those who cashed in by supplying raw material for the cable-news Trump-haters, and the media vendors of this product bear responsibility for elevating the “Creepy Porn Lawyer” to nationwide celebrity status.

If your Schadenboner lasts more than four hours…

— F.U. Scott Fitzgerald! (@FuFitz) March 26, 2019

Ace: “Come on — aren’t you getting a little tired of #Winning?”

Category: CNN, Crime, MSNBC

SPLC Meltdown Continues

Posted on | March 26, 2019 | Comments Off on SPLC Meltdown Continues

After the Southern Poverty Law Center fired co-founder Morris Dees, the resignation of SPLC president Richard Cohen soon followed, and now a third senior official of the anti-“hate” group is gone:

The shakeup of senior leadership at the Southern Poverty Law Center continued this week with the resignation of the center’s legal director, Rhonda Brownstein.
A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed the resignation to AL.com, but declined to speak publicly about the specifics of individual personnel decisions. Efforts to reach Brownstein have been unsuccessful.
Brownstein’s resignation [Sunday] comes two days after longtime SPLC President Richard Cohen resigned for undisclosed reasons, and a week after co-founder Morris Dees was fired amid questions about sexual harassment, gender and racial discrimination at the nonprofit organization.

Remember that the SPLC became a $400-milllion left-wing hate machine by “exposing” alleged Thought Crimes by others, and is now the target of at least three different lawsuits — one by Baltimore lawyer Glen Keith Allen, another by the D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and a third by Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes. The mounting problems at the “Poverty Palace” in Montgomery were compounded when a former SPLC official wrote about the “hate” scam in the New Yorker, as Becket Adams of the Washington Examiner explains:

The center’s chief goal is to bilk naive and wealthy donors who believe it’s an earnest effort to combat bigotry. . . .
“Outside of work,” author Bob Moser recalls of his days working for the supposed anti-hate group, “we spent a lot of time drinking and dishing in Montgomery bars and restaurants about … the hyperbolic fund-raising appeals, and the fact that, though the center claimed to be effective in fighting extremism, ‘hate’ always continued to be on the rise, more dangerous than ever, with each year’s report on hate groups. ‘The S.P.L.C.—making hate pay,’ we’d say.”
“[I]t was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we’d become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam,” he adds.
The way Moser tells it, the center’s chief founder, Morris Dees, who was dismissed unceremoniously last week for unspecified reasons, discovered early on that he could rake in boatloads of cash by convincing “gullible Northern liberals” that his group is doing the hard work of fighting “hate.” . . .
“[T]he center continues to take in far more than it spends. And it still tends to emphasize splashy cases that are sure to draw national attention,” he writes adding the group’s “central strategy” involves “taking on cases guaranteed to make headlines and inflame the far right while demonstrating to potential donors that the center has not only all the right enemies but also the grit and know-how to take them down.”
Moser adds there is an inescapable sense of “guilt” that comes with thinking about “the legions of donors who believed that their money was being used, faithfully and well, to do the Lord’s work in the heart of Dixie. We were part of the con, and we knew it.”

No intelligent person ever believed the SPLC’s “hate” hype, but there are many liberals with more money than sense, and Morris Dees figured out a lucrative sure-fire way to take advantage of them.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)

Category: Racism

In The Mailbox: 03.25.19

Posted on | March 25, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: F*c*b**k’s Latest Security Insanity
EBL: Medal Of Honor – John Basilone
Twitchy: Brent Bozell Explains Why CNN Is Having a Very Bad Day – Creepy Porn lawyer Was On How Many Times?
Louder With Crowder: This SportsCenter Rant Against Outrage Culture Is Perfect, also, Rep. Dan Crenshaw Calls Out Democrat Colleagues On Collusion Hoax

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: They Are Not My People, also, The Time of Reckoning
American Power: Parenting & Privilege In College Admissions, also, Democrats Crushed As Mueller Report Lands With A Thud
American Thinker: Race Relations – If Democrats Would Get Out Of Our Way, also, The Rolling Genocide Of American Blacks
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: The Real Russian Threat – Russian Troops Deploy To Venezuela In Support Of Maduro, also, For Socialism To Make Sense, You Must Employ Envy, Ignorance, And Faith
BattleSwarm: Fitzmas II – The Muellering, also, Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update
CDR Salamander: Physical Condition Is A Primary Indicator
Da Tech Guy: Tales From The Illinois Exodus, Part 2, also, Lost On Double-Think Road
Don Surber: Make Them Pay For Their Failed Coup, also, Now It’s Obama’s Turn
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, Don’t Quit Your Day Job
First Street Journal: The NYT Thinks America Deserves A Leader Who’ll Suspend Constitutional Rights (Part One, Part Two)
Fred On Everything: Biology Department At Lehigh University Mans The Ramparts
The Geller Report: Organization of Islamic Cooperation Demands UN Declare Islamophobia A Form Of Racism, also, MI5 Admits Jihadi Terror Cases Absolutely Dwarf Far-Right Terror
Hogewash: Crazy People, also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Can Comedy Recover From The Russia Conspiracy Hoax? also, How Long Can Clooney Stay Silent On SPLC’s Fall?
Joe For America: Full Panic Mode – Pelosi Holds Emergency Conference Call Over Mueller Report, also, Rep. Ilhan Omar Caught Fundraising With Terror-Linked Groups
JustOneMinute: Ban ALL The Guns! also, The #Resistance Regroups
Legal Insurrection: These Democrats Won’t Accept The Mueller Report Or Apologize For Lying These Last Two Years, also, German Police Foil Major Islamic Attack, Arrest Ten Suspects
The PanAm Post: Despite Humanitarian Catastrophe, Maduro Still Sending $2.5 Million In Oil To Cuba Daily
Power Line: Obstruction of What? also, An Intelligence Failure
Shot In The Dark: Thirty Million Dollars Worth of Nothingburger
STUMP: An Ugly Interest Rate Environment, And Public Pensions Chasing Returns
The Jawa Report: Breaking! Islamic State Of Losers Lives Up To Its Name!
The Political Hat: NV Gun Grabbers Go Omnibus To Assist Local Gun Grabbers
This Ain’t Hell: Another Returns, also, Oh, Here We Go Again
Victory Girls: The Five Biggest Losers From The Mueller Report
Volokh Conspiracy: First Impressions On The Mueller Investigation
Weasel Zippers: Lindsey Graham Announces At Press Conference He’s Calling For Special Prosecutor To Investigate DOJ, FBI, Hillary, And Targeting Of Trump, also, Kellyanne Conway Says Rep. Schiff Should Resign For “Peddling A Lie” About Trump And Russia
Megan McArdle: Embrace The Exclamation! All These Critics Are Missing The Point
Mark Steyn: Deep State Dumpster Fire, also, The Fanmaid’s Tale

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Category: Linkagery

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Final Wisdom and a Failed Coup

Posted on | March 25, 2019 | 1 Comment

Gonna miss the sunshine and palmettos.

LITTLE RIVER, South Carolina
Last night, while I was pounding out 1,700 words about the Marianne Williamson presidential campaign, the political world at large was going insane over the conclusion of Robert Mueller’s investigation:

For President Donald Trump, the fight over the “witch hunt” is only just beginning.
Now that special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation into Trump’s campaign is over, it’s being transformed into a rallying cry and a weapon for the president’s re-election campaign.
The pall of the two-year probe lifted Sunday, when Attorney General William Barr released a summary of Mueller’s findings that said the wide-ranging investigation found no evidence of collusion by Trump’s 2016 campaign with the Russian government. Barr’s four-page letter was immediately seized upon by the Republican president and his allies as a weapon to use against Democrats, the so-called Deep State and the media.
Even before Mueller’s conclusions were revealed, it was clear that Trump saw the end of the investigation as a political opportunity. . . .
“Democrats and their liberal media allies for two years slandered President @realDonaldTrump for ‘conspiring with Russia,’” press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted. “It was all a malicious, preposterous lie given wall to wall media coverage despite zero evidence. This should never again happen to an American President.”

You can read the rest of that Associated Press report, but you see the biased angle here. The liberal media narrative now is how Republicans weaponized the Mueller findings as ammunition for Trump’s re-election, as if we are supposed to forget how Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) pushed the “Russia! Russia! Russia!” conspiracy theory as a weapon to de-legitimize and undermine Trump’s presidency. The media’s bias consists mainly of assuming that whatever Democrats say or do is always right, whereas anything Republicans say or do is always wrong, and we’re not supposed to notice this bias. Therefore, even when a 675-day investigation (inspired by a phony dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign) fails to find evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing, the media cannot simply report the fact that the president has been exonerated, nor acknowledge that he was absolutely right in calling the investigation a “witch hunt.” No, Trump is a Republican and therefore, according to the biases of the media, he must be guilty of something.

So rather than reporting the actual news — the attempted “Deep State” coup has failed — instead the Associated Press spins the Republican reaction to the Mueller report as inherently sinister. It’s wrong, according to the AP, for this result to be “transformed into a rallying cry and a weapon for the president’s re-election campaign.” Why is it wrong? Because it is wrong for a Republican president to try to get re-elected. These professional journalists claim to be objective, yet they apparently lack the ability to step back and question the accuracy and fairness of their own assumptions. But I digress . . .

Probably not the ideal wardrobe for Myrtle Beach.

Anyone can, and lots of people do, sit in front of a laptop tapping out political screeds about the latest Drudge Report headlines, and it’s ridiculous for me to sit here in South Carolina ranting like this when that’s not what I traveled 500 miles here to do. My three days and two nights in the Palmetto State weren’t merely an excuse to enjoy the sunshine and scenery, but rather I came here to see what the Williamson campaign looks like on the ground at close range. It’s one thing to sit home nurturing a wild hunch that a long-short dark horse candidate could exceed expectations in a year when Democrats might be desperate enough to beat Trump that they’ll risk going with an untested outsider. It’s another thing to travel to an early primary state and directly examine the candidate’s operations. To do this, as a conservative journalist covering a Democratic primary, one must undertake the difficult task of trying to gain psychological distance from the situation. Pure journalistic objectivity is a mirage, a delusional ideal, but nevertheless I must attempt to set aside my own undeniable biases and try to think of this campaign from the perspective of a typical Democratic primary voter: What do they want? What kind of messages will appeal to the enraged grassroots gripped by Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Buttigieg surges to third place in new Iowa poll
— The Hill, March 24

Do you see what I mean? As crazy as it seems to me, many grassroots Democrats in the crucial early caucus state of Iowa believe that the gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, could be the next president. And if Mayor Booty-Judge must therefore be taken seriously, who can confidently say Marianne Williamson has no chance in the 2020 race?

As I say, however, doing this kind of coverage requires more than merely believing that the long-shot candidate actually has a chance, it also requires me to soberly and accurately report policy statements and rhetoric that are almost entirely antithetical to my own beliefs. Picture me sitting in a black church in the South Carolina Low Country, listening to a speech by Marianne Williamson, jotting down notes and praying that my head doesn’t literally explode Scanners-style.

The only common ground of agreement between Williamson and myself is a resentment of our out-of-touch political elites, and while our worldviews might otherwise be 180 degrees diametrically opposed, Democrat primary voters may just be in a mood for an outsider candidate who does what Donald Trump did to the GOP field in 2016 — stomp through it like Godzilla destroying Tokyo. The way Bernie Sanders got screwed over by the DNC, an insider scheme to deliver the nomination to Hillary Clinton, who then proceeded to bungle away what looked like a sure thing — she never set foot in Wisconsin! — has inspired a wrathful mood among Democrat grassroots activists, who are as contemptuous of their party’s leadership cabal in much the same way grassroots conservatives despise the GOP elite. In such a climate of populist discontent, almost anything is possible, and I guarantee you that campaign managers for Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand — all of whom are United States Senators, for crying out loud — are wondering how their candidates could possibly be trailing Mayor Booty-Judge in Iowa.

And so I sit here drinking my sweet iced tea and using the free wifi, while I deliver The Final Wisdom from South Carolina:

Marianne Williamson was in the pulpit at Bethel A.M.E. Church Sunday morning, and the sermon she was preaching began with a reference to Esther, the Jewish wife of Persia’s King Xerxes, who saved her people from destruction by the king’s evil minister, Haman. Williamson evoked Esther as “a vessel for the salvation of her people” who were “disadvantaged and oppressed.” Certainly this Bible-based message about deliverance resonated with the black congregation, whose historic church dates back to the 1860s. However, the woman in the pulpit, who has been called Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual guru,” had not come to the South Carolina lowlands as an author promoting her books, but rather as a candidate for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination.
“Being American does not only give us rights, it gives us responsibilities,” Ms. Williamson told the congregation. “This country must have a great rising up.”
For all the talk about the Religious Right’s role in Republican politics, little attention is paid to the influence among Democrats of the Religious Left, of which Ms. Williamson is a recognized leader. And if the odds against her winning her party’s 2020 presidential nomination are a million-to-one, there are nonetheless serious Democrats who believe she can achieve such a miracle. One of them is Dr. Gloria Bromell Tinubu, state director of the Williamson campaign. An experienced politician who served in the Georgia legislature before returning to her native South Carolina, Dr. Tinubu was twice the Democratic nominee for Congress in the 7th District, getting more than 100,000 votes against Republican Rep. Tom Rice in this deep “red” district. Dr. Tinubu introduced Ms. Williamson at Bethel A.M.E. by saying, “I consider her a sister,” which is about as strong an endorsement as any Democrat needs here. . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator. Now, I’m heading north toward Fort Bragg, where I’ll visit my granddaughter before heading back home, where the high temperature tomorrow will be 50°F and the low will be below freezing. Gonna miss the sunshine, but remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

PREVIOUSLY:

March 24: A Sunday Blessing in South Carolina
March 24: Saturday Scenes from South Carolina
March 23: Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Who’s Heading to the Cornbread Festival?
March 21: Just Got Off the Phone . . .
March 20: #Marianne2020: Let’s Make This Happen

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Category: Democrats, Donald Trump, Election, South Carolina

Rule 5 Sunday: Katharine McPhee

Posted on | March 25, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Not being a frequent moviegoer or a pop music fan, I had no idea who actress & singer Katharine McPhee was before finding her name on a website devoted to famous birthdays, but here she is for your viewing pleasure.